Before the first pitch was thrown, before the first horse crossed the finish line at an American track, humans were already running for money. The story of American sports as a business enterprise begins not with entrepreneurial vision or athletic excellence, but with something more primal: the urge to bet on the outcome.
An examination of how gambling shaped American sports from colonial footraces to modern mobile betting platforms
The First Footraces: Running for Purses
In colonial America, footraces drew crowds not for the sake of athletic competition, but because spectators could wager on the results. Runners competed for purses funded by entry fees and side bets. The fastest men in a village didn’t race for glory alone. They raced because gamblers needed something to bet on, and winners could claim a share of the pot.
These early contests established a template that would define American sports for centuries: the competition existed to facilitate the wager. Without betting, there was little reason to organize formal races, set rules, or draw crowds. The sport served the bet, not the other way around.
Horse Racing: America’s First Organized Sports Business
By the early 19th century, horse racing had emerged as America’s first true sports industry, and gambling was its lifeblood. Southern plantation owners bred thoroughbreds specifically for racing, and tracks sprouted across the country from Long Island to Louisiana. The sport’s entire economic model depended on betting.
The Jockey Club, formed on February 9, 1894, didn’t exist primarily to promote equestrian excellence.[^1] It existed to regulate betting, ensure fair wagering, and maintain public confidence in race outcomes. Track owners collected fees from bookmakers, who took bets openly at the rail. The horses were merely the mechanism, the randomizing device for the real product: the wager.
When reformers tried to ban racetrack gambling in the early 20th century, attendance collapsed. Tracks closed. The breeding industry contracted. Without betting, horse racing had no viable business model. The industry survived only after states legalized pari-mutuel betting, which allowed governments to tax wagers and track owners to profit from betting pools.
Baseball: The National Pastime’s Betting Roots
Baseball’s rise as the national pastime in the late 19th century coincided with explosive growth in sports gambling. Players and fans bet openly on games. Pool rooms in every major city posted odds on league contests. The sport’s popularity was inseparable from its role as a betting vehicle.
The 1919 Black Sox scandal revealed how thoroughly gambling had penetrated professional baseball. Eight Chicago White Sox players conspired with gamblers to throw the World Series to the Cincinnati Reds in exchange for bribes.[^2] The fix wasn’t an aberration. It was the logical conclusion of a sport that had always served betting culture. Although the players were acquitted in a 1921 criminal trial, newly appointed Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis banned all eight for life from professional baseball.[^3] Baseball spent decades trying to distance itself from its gambling origins while quietly relying on betting interest to drive attendance and newspaper coverage.
The hypocrisy was obvious. Baseball needed gamblers to care about games, but couldn’t acknowledge their existence. This tension would define American sports for generations.
Boxing, Basketball, and Football: New Sports, Same Foundation
As new professional sports emerged in the 20th century, each followed the same pattern. Boxing became a major attraction because high-stakes betting on fights drew enormous crowds and radio audiences. Bookmakers took action openly at arenas, and prizefighters’ purses were funded by gate receipts from fans who came to bet, not just to watch.
Basketball’s college game became a national phenomenon in the 1940s and 1950s, fueled by widespread point-spread betting. The 1951 point-shaving scandal implicated 32 players from seven colleges including powerhouses City College of New York and Kentucky.[^4] Players admitted to accepting bribes totaling thousands of dollars to manipulate point spreads in 86 games across 17 states.[^5] The scandal demonstrated that gambling wasn’t incidental to the sport. It was central.
Professional football’s growth in the 1960s and 1970s owed much to the point spread, a betting innovation that made every game compelling for gamblers. A lopsided matchup became interesting if the favorite had to cover a large spread. The sport’s television appeal came partly from its ability to generate betting interest, which kept viewers engaged for four quarters.
The Television Era: Betting Hidden but Essential
As television made sports a mass entertainment product in the second half of the 20th century, the betting connection grew stronger even as it became less visible. Networks didn’t mention gambling, but they structured coverage around it. Announcers discussed point spreads without calling them point spreads. They mentioned whether teams were “covering” or failing to cover. Viewers understood.
Fantasy sports, which emerged in the 1960s with fantasy baseball and grew into a multibillion-dollar industry, were thinly disguised gambling. Participants paid entry fees and won prize money based on statistical outcomes they couldn’t control. It was sports betting with a semantic veneer, and it kept millions of fans engaged with games they might not otherwise watch.
The NFL became America’s dominant sports league in this era partly because its structure served gamblers perfectly. Games were played mostly on Sundays, allowing for organized weekly betting pools. The season was short enough that every game mattered, but long enough to sustain a full season of wagering. The playoff structure created natural betting crescendos.
The Professional Gambler as Market Maker
While leagues publicly shunned gambling, professional sports betting services became sophisticated businesses. Offshore bookmakers processed billions in wagers. Las Vegas sportsbooks attracted tourists and locals alike. Handicappers sold picks. Line-making became a professional skill.
These gamblers and bookmakers served a crucial function: they created the market infrastructure that made casual betting possible. By establishing odds, moving lines based on betting action, and processing millions of wagers, professional gambling operations made sports betting accessible to average fans. This accessibility drove fan engagement, which drove television ratings, which drove advertising revenue.
The leagues benefited enormously from this ecosystem while maintaining the fiction that gambling had nothing to do with their business model.
The Daily Fantasy Loophole
In 2006, Congress passed the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act, which prohibited online gambling but included an exemption for fantasy sports deemed to be games of skill.[^6] FanDuel, founded in 2009, and DraftKings, founded in 2012, exploited this loophole to create daily fantasy sports contests that were functionally identical to sports betting.[^7]
Users paid entry fees, selected lineups, and won prize money based on player performance in that day’s or week’s games. The companies insisted this was a game of skill, not chance, and therefore not gambling. State regulators initially accepted this argument, and daily fantasy sports exploded.
By 2015, DraftKings and FanDuel were spending hundreds of millions on television advertising, saturating NFL broadcasts with messages about winning money on sports. The pretense that American sports weren’t built on gambling had become impossible to maintain.
The Supreme Court Opens the Floodgates
The 2018 Supreme Court decision in Murphy v. NCAA struck down the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act, which had banned sports betting in most states since 1992.[^8] The Court ruled 6-3 that PASPA violated the anti-commandeering doctrine of the Tenth Amendment by prohibiting states from authorizing sports gambling.[^9] The ruling allowed states to legalize sports wagering, and they moved quickly.
As of 2025, 38 states and Washington, D.C., have legalized sports betting in some form.[^10] The industry generated $13.7 billion in revenue in 2024, with Americans legally wagering nearly $150 billion on sports throughout the year.[^11] DraftKings and FanDuel pivoted from daily fantasy to become the dominant sports betting platforms, joined by established casino operators and new entrants.
The leagues, which had opposed gambling legalization for decades, reversed course immediately. The NFL signed partnerships with betting companies. The NBA sold sponsorships to sportsbooks. Stadiums installed betting lounges. Television broadcasts integrated betting odds into graphics packages. Announcers discussed spreads and over-unders openly.
The Current Frenzy: Gambling Everywhere
The modern sports betting landscape represents the culmination of centuries of evolution. Mobile betting apps allow users to wager from anywhere, anytime. In-game betting lets gamblers place wagers on individual plays, at-bats, or possessions. Algorithms push notifications urging users to bet on games in progress.
DraftKings and FanDuel have become sports media companies, not just betting platforms. They employ analysts, produce content, and sponsor broadcasts. The line between sports coverage and betting promotion has disappeared.
Traditional media has followed. ESPN, once banned from mentioning gambling, now runs a daily betting show. Sports Illustrated publishes betting picks. Local newspapers run betting columns. The sports media business model increasingly depends on driving traffic to betting platforms through affiliate links.
The Circular Economy
The relationship between sports and betting has come full circle. In colonial America, footraces existed to facilitate wagers. In 2025, the same dynamic applies at a vastly larger scale. Sports leagues generate billions in revenue from betting partnerships and data sales. Television networks rely on gambling interest to drive ratings. Teams and leagues schedule games and structure seasons partly to maximize betting engagement.
The leagues no longer pretend otherwise. When the NFL expanded to an 18-week regular season and added playoff teams, the decision was made partly to create more betting inventory. When the NBA installed cameras to track player movement and partnered with betting companies to sell that data, it acknowledged what had always been true: the league exists in part to generate betting opportunities.
Players have become uncomfortable participants in this system. They don’t see gambling revenue directly in most cases, but their performances generate billions in betting handle. Some worry about harassment from gamblers who lose money betting on games. Others object to having their likenesses used to promote gambling.
The Cost of Admission
The current sports betting frenzy has created problems that earlier, more hypocritical eras avoided. Problem gambling has increased as betting has become more accessible. Young men in particular show high rates of gambling addiction tied to sports betting apps. The constant drumbeat of betting advertising normalizes gambling for children who watch sports.
Leagues and betting companies have added responsible gambling messages to their promotions, but the warnings are drowned out by the volume of advertising encouraging people to bet. The apps themselves use psychological techniques borrowed from casino gaming and social media to encourage frequent betting and extended engagement.
Match-fixing concerns have grown as well. With massive amounts of money wagered on everything from major championships to obscure international matches, the incentive and opportunity for corruption have increased. Tennis, soccer, and basketball have all seen fixing scandals in recent years, and the explosion of in-game betting has created new vulnerabilities.
The Inescapable Conclusion
American sports exist as a business because of betting culture. This isn’t a controversial interpretation or an exaggeration. It’s the historical record. From the first colonial footrace to the latest DraftKings promotion, the through line is clear: organized sports in America have always served gambling, and gambling has always funded sports.
The current moment is simply the most honest version of a relationship that has existed for centuries. The pretense is gone. The hypocrisy has ended. Sports leagues and gambling companies are open partners now, and the business model that was always implicit is now explicit.
The wager built American sports. It sustains them still. Whether this is a problem or simply a fact depends on perspective, but the reality is beyond dispute. Americans don’t gamble because sports exist. Sports exist as businesses because Americans gamble.
The runner crosses the finish line in 2025 just as in 1725: because someone, somewhere, is betting on the outcome. That has always been the point.
Sources and References
[^1]: The Jockey Club. “History of The Jockey Club.” Accessed November 2025. https://www.jockeyclub.com/default.asp?section=About; “Jockey Club (United States),” Wikipedia, accessed November 2025, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jockey_Club_(United_States). The American Jockey Club received a certificate of incorporation from the State of New York on February 9, 1894.
[^2]: “Black Sox Scandal,” Wikipedia, accessed November 2025, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Sox_Scandal; “Black Sox Scandal,” Britannica, accessed November 2025, https://www.britannica.com/event/Black-Sox-Scandal. Eight members of the Chicago White Sox were accused of intentionally losing the 1919 World Series against the Cincinnati Reds in exchange for payment from a gambling syndicate.
[^3]: U.S. Census Bureau, “October 2024: The 1919 Chicago ‘Black Sox’ Scandal,” accessed November 2025, https://www.census.gov/about/history/stories/monthly/2024/october-2024.html. Despite acquittals in a 1921 trial, Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis permanently banned all eight implicated players from professional baseball.
[^4]: “1951 College Basketball Point-Shaving Scandal,” Wikipedia, accessed November 2025, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CCNY_point-shaving_scandal. The scandal involved at least seven American colleges and universities, most closely associated with the 1949-50 CCNY Beavers and the University of Kentucky.
[^5]: Matthew Goodman, “Corruption Mars College Basketball In New York,” Sports History Weekly, May 16, 2023, accessed November 2025, https://www.sportshistoryweekly.com/stories/ncaa-basketball-point-shaving-ccny-beavers-march-madness,1140; “Basketball Point-Shaving Scandal,” EBSCO Research, accessed November 2025. Between 1947 and 1951, 32 players admitted to taking bribes to fix 86 games in 23 cities across 17 states.
[^6]: “Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006,” Wikipedia, accessed November 2025, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unlawful_Internet_Gambling_Enforcement_Act_of_2006. The UIGEA specifically exempts fantasy sports that meet certain requirements, including skill-based contests and outcomes that do not depend solely on the performance of a single real-world team or player.
[^7]: “FanDuel,” Wikipedia, accessed November 2025, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FanDuel; “DraftKings,” Wikipedia, accessed November 2025, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DraftKings. FanDuel was founded on July 21, 2009, in Edinburgh, Scotland. DraftKings was established in 2012 in Boston, Massachusetts.
[^8]: Murphy v. National Collegiate Athletic Association, 584 U.S. 453 (2018). The Supreme Court issued its decision on May 14, 2018.
[^9]: “Murphy v. National Collegiate Athletic Association,” Britannica, accessed November 2025, https://www.britannica.com/topic/Murphy-v-National-Collegiate-Athletic-Association. The Court ruled 6-3 that PASPA violated the anti-commandeering doctrine of the Tenth Amendment by prohibiting states from authorizing sports gambling.
[^10]: “U.S. Sports Betting Revenue in October 2025 – State-by-State Market Analysis,” RG, accessed November 2025, https://rg.org/statistics/us; “Sports Betting Revenue Tracker,” Legal Sports Report, accessed November 2025, https://www.legalsportsreport.com/sports-betting-states/revenue/. As of 2024-2025, sports betting is legal in 38 states plus Washington, D.C.
[^11]: “State of the States 2025,” American Gaming Association, accessed November 2025, https://www.americangaming.org/resources/state-of-the-states-2025/; Alex Andrejev, “U.S. Sports Betting Industry Posts Record $13.7B Revenue for ’24,” ESPN, February 19, 2025, https://www.espn.com/espn/betting/story/_/id/43922129/us-sports-betting-industry-posts-record-137b-revenue-24. Commercial sports betting revenue reached $13.78 billion in 2024 as Americans legally bet $149.90 billion on sports throughout the year.
Note: This article synthesizes historical and contemporary research on the relationship between gambling and American sports. Statistics and market figures reflect the most recent available data as of November 2025. Some historical details regarding early footraces and colonial-era betting rely on established historical patterns rather than specific documented events, as comprehensive records from this period are limited.